Period: Yugoslav Wars

Region: Estern Slavonia

The Serb victim Darinka Grujić - Vukovar 1991

We spoke with Miloš Grujić, the husband of murdered Darinka, in his apartment in Borovo Naselje, muncipality Vukovar. 

For a long time, we tried to reach him by phone to arrange a meeting, but without success, Miloš was often not at home during the day. Nevertheless, persistence paid off, and we finally heard his story.

At first glance, it seems like many others we have already published. But it is not. Each of these stories contains a faint but distinct line that sets it apart. In short, the story of Darinka Grujić’s murder can be summed up in the words we used in the title:

“If you leave, you're guilty.
If you stay, you're dead!”

WHO WAS DARINKA GRUJIĆ?

She graduated from the Higher School of Economics and worked in Borovo Naselje as a planning officer. She was also active in numerous organizations. During the last ten years of her life, she was primarily involved with the Red Cross, serving as the chairwoman of the Borovo Naselje branch for the last six years.
That is also where she remained in 1991.

She stayed to care for the vulnerable and help wherever help was needed. As a young woman, before her marriage, she practiced gymnastics. With her team, she won the championship of Croatia and placed second in the Yugoslav national competition. She loved sports and socializing. Her maiden name was Bandić, and everyone affectionately called her Dara.
With her husband Miloš, she had a daughter, a son-in-law, and a grandson who was three years old when his grandmother was killed.

"When the situation in Vukovar and the surrounding area deteriorated," Miloš begins, "there were preparations to evacuate children, women, and the elderly from the city, and my Dara advised me to go with them. I was supposed to lead the group being evacuated to the coast."

MEMORIES OF HIS MURDERED FATHER

"At first, I hesitated, thinking I didn’t need to go anywhere, but then I remembered the previous war, the Second World War, and changed my mind. I recalled what happened to my father in 1941. A priest and a merchant from our town in Banija, where we lived at the time, came to tell him it would be wise to leave-that things would not go well there.

My father refused, for the sake of the children, his elderly mother, and our property. In July 1941 that year, the Ustaše (Croatian nazi-fascists) came, took him away, and we never saw him again. He too used to say that he was good with everyone and had harmed no one-but it didn’t help him. He disappeared, and we never learned what happened to him.

There are three known mass graves at Banski Grabovac, and he is likely in one of them-along with, reportedly, about 1,500 Serbs from Banija. I remembered all of that and realized that although I had done nothing wrong, I should still go. So I changed my mind,” he recalls.

DEPARTURE FROM VUKOVAR

As the group leader, Miloš traveled with the evacuees to Mali Lošinj on August 6, 1991. He remained in contact with his wife as long as possible-until mid-September. The passengers from his bus were housed in Hotel Helios and, according to him, were received warmly.

Milos Grujic, 2012

During their phone calls, Miloš repeatedly urged Dara to join him, feeling she had already done enough. But she firmly refused, unwilling to abandon those she was helping. Later, the phone lines were severed, and they lost contact. Miloš tried reaching her via Zagreb, Bosnia, and friends, but all efforts failed.

HE’S BEEN WAITING FOR JUSTICE FOR DECADES

Based on the testimonies he gathered, Miloš firmly believes that what he learned is true. Darinka, as a Red Cross official, was very active in assisting the local population. When he returned to Vukovar, no one had a single bad word to say about her.

“Friends told me she was dismissed from her position in the second half of October 1991. One woman who lives nearby said she overheard a young member of the ZNG telling his mother: ‘Mom, I was shocked by what I heard-Aunt Dara is a traitor. They say she has a radio transmitter.’”

She was accused of relaying information to the Yugoslav People’s Army (JNA). She was arrested around October 25 and taken to the Borovo-Komerc building. There, she was given a bed-according to a woman who was with her and who even lent her a blanket since Dara had nothing with her. She was forbidden from speaking with anyone.

The same woman told Miloš that Dara was taken for interrogation every night and then returned. They had a small black poodle that was with her in the shelter. A ZNG member asked, “Whose dog is this?” When he was told it belonged to Darinka, he kicked it against the wall. The dog died instantly. “That was an extremely inhumane act,” says Miloš.

He never learned whether Darinka was tortured in camp Borovo-Komerc, only that she was interrogated nightly. He heard she hadn’t eaten and endured this until November 1, when, after midday mass, she was taken from camp Komerc around 2 p.m. along with two croatian paramilitary.

They were brought to the Abazia pizzeria, where Darinka was separated from the two men. The men were taken in one direction, and by order of the commander of the Trpinjska Cesta defense, the late Marko Babić, Darinka was taken to the headquarters on Trpinjska Cesta.

“Before all of this, while still working at the Red Cross, Dara had heard that around twenty civilians from Borovo Naselje were taken to the building on Trpinjska Cesta. She went there and had them all released. They were innocent and returned home. Apparently, they were to be used as a human shield. Some of them-like Đuro Novaković and Borovo’s former goalkeeper Barbić-later confirmed this to me.”

Miloš doesn’t know whether that act led Babić to seek revenge. Among those who took Darinka to the HQ were now-HV General Kapular, someone called Đidara, and a Bosnian man whose name remains unknown to him. He never met them-all information he later verified.

Later that same day, around 4 p.m. on November 1, she was taken away by Marko Babić and Tomo Zadro in a car.

MILOŠ SEARCHED ENDLESSLY

At a military court, a man named Kovačić testified that when he asked those two men the next morning about Dara’s whereabouts, they pointed to the sky. When asked about the two men taken with her, they replied: “They swam to their friends in Novi Sad.”

Marko Babic, on left side

Ever since the war, Miloš has been searching-he contacted the International Red Cross, the Croatian Red Cross, and the Serbian Red Cross. He even went to Novi Sad in the hope her body might have surfaced, but he found nothing. He also visited the prison in Sremska Mitrovica, thinking she might have been captured. Colonel Maksimović disabused him of that idea, saying many people were falsely accused of owning a radio transmitter and then liquidated.

“That’s what happened to Milorad Zorić, my son-in-law’s father. They claimed he had a radio transmitter, yet he was in a shelter in Obućara when he was taken and killed. His body was found near a kindergarten in Borovo Naselje. So this story about radio transmitters was just a pretext to remove and liquidate certain people. I still haven’t found her.”

Miloš is baffled that, despite so many acquaintances and their open home to people of all backgrounds, no one has anonymously informed him of the location of Dara’s body.

“I would be very grateful. Even now, I’m not seeking revenge-I’m not filing lawsuits. The war is to blame. Whoever did it must live with it. I only want my wife’s body to be found so our child knows where to light a candle and lay flowers. That’s all I ask. And I don’t think it’s too much.”

THE TRUTH IS BEING SUPPRESSED

Miloš remained in Lošinj until early October 1991, when the evacuees had to move to another facility because Hotel Helios lacked heating. Since his son-in-law, daughter, and grandson were in Belgrade, he decided to join them.

“There were about 300 of us in that hotel-14 babies, many elderly and infirm. I was named as their representative. Every evening I attended a meeting with the hotel director to coordinate our needs. When the relocation came up, I asked to go to Belgrade. No one objected. I said goodbye to everyone and left.”

Some of serbian victims in Vukovar, 1991

He traveled through Slovenia and Hungary to reach Belgrade. He returned to Vukovar on November 23, 1991. That was when he found out his wife had been killed. He thought, as had happened with others, that he would find her body, perhaps near the brickyard where autopsies were conducted-but he never did.

“Meetings with the commission for missing persons ended up being nothing but attempts to console us. I’m starting to lose hope. It seems to me, as in many other cases, the truth is deliberately being suppressed so her body will never be found. Someone surely knows something but chooses to remain silent.”

“Even though I said all of this to the commission for missing persons, to Minister Matić, and to Colonel Grujić, they have done nothing to uncover the truth.”

Author: Slavko Bubalo
Published in “Izvor” magazine, Issue No. 52
October 2012